Severe video corruption from 6800ST

[PAUL J CHATMAN]

PC AMD ATHON XP 2800+ 2.1Ghz / 1.5GB RAM
nVIDIA GF6800 128MB / v169.21
AGP 8x /XP Home 5.1.2600 SP 2

All of this has pictures here, with additional information. I, as mentioned on my gallery, bought a 7600GS 512MB card, but this is the second nVIDIA card I have owned that started acting funny after about 2 1/2 years...hmmm?

Anyway, after downloading and installing Thief III: Deadly Shadows via GameTap (GT) my screen went black and the monitor went on standby. Afterward, the screen came back on with the color set to (what appeared to be 256 colors) a low resolution, maybe 800x600 or 640x480. There was a system message stating that the video card received bad information and stopped functioning normally and suggested I reboot the system.

The system came back up normally, so I ran GT to remove Thief, believing it to be the cause, only to have it happen again just as GT was starting up. So I reset (not reboot because the system was non-responsive) and the screen was completed garbled at boot up time; the text was covered in vertical lines running up and down the screen. The reset triggered the checkdisk, XP came up and uninstalled and re-installed my nVIDIA drivers (this time v93.71). After which I ran Thief I, and it came up normally, but then a few minutes later the screen garbled up.

I underscore this only happen after attempting to play Thief 3. I also have Hitman 2 & Second Sight, and these play fine. I have not been able to try them out because when i attempted to run GT AGAIN today the screen went black and the monitor went to standby. Then a few minutes later the screen was at low resolution as before and a similar (not the same) message appeared saying there was a system error, but then the screen went black and the monitor went on standby again. I couldn't bring the screen back, but then the system restarted itself - at which point the screen was garbled again.

So...is anyone (long shot) having, or have had, any issues with GT cause video/screen corruption after running a game?

I really cannot help but believe that GT, or rather maybe a component within GT, caused this. As I said it only occurred after trying to run Thief III.

[XDanger]

What are the temps and voltage like?

The fact that you don't mention your temps tells me thats the problem.

two and a half years means dust build-up and overheating most likely.

I remember the exact same kind of boot-up screen corruption when I over overclocked my old agp 6800

Running the card like that will kill it, Clean it now.








or I could be wrong, whats the temps like?

[PAUL J CHATMAN]

This was the STandard 6800 (6800ST 128MB), unclocked. And I honestly do not recall the temps.
However, I did remove and thoroughly clean all the dust off the card and the AGP slot. Then reseated it. It worked, until I ran Half Life 2, and got this nice screen just after a few seconds. So Friday I bought a (OEM off eBay -85$ w/shipping) 7600GT 512MB. It came yesterday, installed an hour ago.

Thanks for the help guys.

Originally Posted by XDanger

What are the temps and voltage like?

The fact that you don't mention your temps tells me thats the problem.

two and a half years means dust build-up and overheating most likely.

I remember the exact same kind of boot-up screen corruption when I over overclocked my old agp 6800

Running the card like that will kill it, Clean it now.
or I could be wrong, whats the temps like?